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 Hard going but worth it
Emotional intelligence is not about letting yourself being ruled by your emotions. Quite to the contrary, it is about using emotions smartly. Being emotionally intelligent means that you are able to accurately recognise emotions in yourself and others, understand what they mean and why they're present, and problem solve on that basis. The most emotionally intelligence people I know are excellent at regulating their own emotions, they don't `lose the plot' and they do it in an authentic way.
The Six Core Principles of Emotional Intelligence according to Caruso and Salovey
Indeed, The Emotionally Intelligent Manager constantly re-enforces these messages. The authors go to great lengths to communicate that emotions are data. Their approach to the topic begins with six core principles.
1. Emotion is information - emotions are data about people and social situations. Emotions are reactions we and others have to situations and they tell us a lot about those situations. Emotions are separate from moods; they are temporary and occur in response to situations and interactions. An emotionally intelligent person knows how to distinguish between their emotions and the influence of being in a certain mood.
2. Efforts to ignore emotion don't work - research has shown that it takes a tremendous amount of effort to try and ignore emotions, effort that interferes with our cognitive functioning. If we try to suppress and ignore what we feel, we are less likely to remember information. In fact, according to the authors, it is hypothesised that women remember more about social interactions than men because men are more likely to try and suppress heir emotions in social situations than women!
3. Efforts to hide emotions are also unlikely to work - body language often gives away a lot more than we intend. Research has shown that liars can be spotted through careful observations of gestures and fleeting emotional displays. Given that it takes a lot of effort to hide emotions, chances are we'll be found out. Just think of the sales person who's trying to force on a smile when it is obvious he hates his job. In the words of the authors, "your feelings and emotions will be read by some of the people most of the time and all of the people some of the time."
4. Decisions must incorporate emotions to be effective - Whether we like it or not, our feelings impact on us and others and influence the type of decisions we make. Picture the marketing team trying to come up with a new ground-breaking advertising campaign to the youth market. Now, imagine they have just been told that the company is downsizing and their jobs may be at risk. How likely are they to come up with exciting and novel ideas?
Indeed, positive emotions facilitate our ability to expand our thinking, generate new ideas and encourage us to consider possibilities. By contrast, negative moods are more helpful in helping us focus on details and search out errors. If you're about to sit an exam, being slightly down is actually a good idea!
5. Emotions follow logical patterns - Each emotions follows a sequence from low to high intensity. If you are aware of that, you can quite reliably predict how a person will react to a series of events. You are far less likely to find yourself wondering, for example, why on earth a colleague has become so angry. People's reactions to you and to events around you will not seem so `out of the blue'.
6. Emotional universals exist, but so do specifics - Part of the reason emotional intelligence is so important and so powerful is because there are universal rules of emotions. A happy face is seen as a happy face all over the world, the same holds true for displays of anger.
But, it is important to remember that there are culturally and gender specific `emotional display rules' that we learn almost by osmosis. For example, `boys don't cry', and `forthright men are assertive while forthright women are aggressive'.
Another interesting phenomenon is the notion of secondary emotions. Whereas anger, fear and joy are basic emotions we experience without much thinking, embarrassment, shame and disgust are culturally specific. What's embarrassing in one culture - like kissing strangers - is culturally appropriate in another.
I hope that by now, I've convinced the more sceptical readers of the importance of emotional intelligence. The real strength of the Emotionally Intelligent Manager is that it offers a way for everyone to enhance their skills in developing an emotionally intelligent approach to work and life.
The Four Skills of Emotional Intelligence
According to the authors, the emotionally intelligent manager should be skilful in the following:
1. Identifying emotions
2. Using emotions
3. Understanding emotions
4. Managing emotions
The book centres on those skills and much of it is devoted to illustrating their importance using research and case examples. For you to decide if the book is something you should read, I'll outline these skills briefly:
1. Identifying emotions
The ability to pinpoint how people feel is critical but can be quite difficult. The authors include here the ability to identify how you feel and how others feel, being able to express emotions, being able to read between the lines and being able to discern between real and fake emotions. They also refer to an ability to read nonverbal information accurately. Some of you might find it surprising, but research suggests that actual words account for as little at 10% of information in exchanges, the rest being tone, gestures and facial expressions!
Self awareness is obviously a key part of emotional intelligence. Note, however, that the authors emphasise this is about accuracy and insight, rather than excessive introspection that could lead to paralysis.
2. Using emotions
Emotionally intelligent people use emotions to enhance their thinking. People who understand the role of emotions in decision making know that if they're after a productive brain storming session, getting their team into a good mood will enhance its ability to come up with novel ideas. They also pay attention to their own emotions. If they feel uneasy about a client presentation, rather than ignore it as a sign of mild paranoia, they go back and check for errors and misinformation. And crucially, they are able to take others' point of view and understand what it feels like for the other person. As such, they are more likely to gain people's trust and support.
3. Understanding emotions
This is about predicting the emotional future. Emotionally intelligent people understand that emotions follow predicable patterns. This skill is the most cognitive- thinking related of the four. It means having an understanding about emotions, what causes them and how emotions transition.
Knowing that emotions follow certain rules gives us an ability to fairly accurately predict how emotions will develop. You can conduct an emotional `what if analysis'. For examples, you might be after a pay rise and you know that your boss is more likely to listen when she is relaxed and feeling positive about her own role and the future of the company. You can start observing when she is more likely to be in this good space and time your discussion accordingly.
4. Managing emotions
This is probably what you first thought of when you heard the term emotional intelligence. It is about incorporating your own feeling and those of others into your thinking. According to the authors,
"People with a strong ability to manage emotions can be passionate, but they also have good emotional self-control, tend to be even-tempered, think clearly when they are experiencing strong feelings, make decisions based on their hearts and their heads, and generally reflect on their emotions often."
Emotionally intelligent managers know how to distinguish between emotions and moods. They know that emotions convey data whereas moods can arise from an un-known reason. In short, they are able to integrate thinking and feeling. Emotionally intelligent managers don't suppress their feeling and vent them. They are able to reflect and integrate emotions into their thinking and use the insights as a source of valuable information for intelligent decision making and action.
Can Emotional Intelligence Be Developed?
The short answer is yes! But you need to want to...
The book contains many great exercises to help you reflect on your emotional style, gain greater insight and develop each of the four skills.
As a taster, I picked the following, which anyone can do and which is quite fun:
Expressing your own emotions - Apparently, many of us are pretty bad at this without even realising. We may think we look pleased, but in fact we permanently look slightly grumpy. The authors suggest practising making faces in front of the mirror. While sitting in a café with two bored children I devised a game using this principle where I made faces and the kids had to guess which emotion I was trying to convey. Needless to say there were many laughs and very quickly they wanted to take their turn. This game turned into quite a favourite!
Reading the emotions of others - Here the authors recommend hiring a movie you've never watched and watching it with the sound off. Stopping at an intense emotional scene and writing down what you think is happening and what the characters are saying. Later, compare it to the actual words spoken.
Another exercise the authors recommend and one that my husband and I both really like is people watching. Without being too obvious, try and observe a social interaction taking place. It's great if you do it with someone else, so that you can see if you agree on what's happening, and who the people are. I'm afraid my husband is much better at this than I am!
And Finally...
The Emotional Intelligent Manager is not an easy read. It is written by academics and feels like an academic book. I have to confess that I skipped some parts that felt overly repetitive on one hand but had to go back and re-read other crucial bits I didn't get at first read on the other. The book has a plethora of case studies and practical exercises that anyone can do. In the appendix they have many exercises designed to help you gain insight into your emotional style, how you handle emotions and use them in problem solving. Given that self insight is the crucial building bloc of developing emotional intelligence, this in itself is valuable.
If you feel that emotional intelligence is something that you need to develop as it may be holding you back - than rush and buy this book and read and re-read it. If you feel that you've got some of the fundamentals already in place, than I suggest you borrow it from your local library and browse it to find the most useful bits for you. In any case, for anyone who works with people, especially those in managerial positions or contemplating a boardroom career, the emotionally intelligent manager can help you develop a very valuable secret weapon.
 Not worth much...
In "The Emotionally Intelligent Manager," David Caruso and Peter Salovey suggest that emotions add an entirely separate layer to intelligence, providing a set of data beyond the purely cognitive. When leaders and managers are able to effectively utilize their emotional intelligence, they make better decisions and provide better leadership of people and organizations. Caruso and Salovey provide a four-step process to allow leaders to harness their emotional intelligence to its greatest potential.
The authors cite a host of scholars in this burgeoning field of emotional intelligence from a wide array of reputable institutions. They also reference a series of anecdotal examples from the business world and from their own lives to put skin on their message.
With their academic backgrounds, I'm hardly in a position to argue with their main thesis. In fact, I found much of their basic premises to be little beyond common sense. In particular, I totally agree that one of the fundamental necessities for good leadership is the ability to acknowledge and appropriately manage our emotions, rather than denying them, pretending that we do not experience them, or suggesting that emotions are counterproductive for decision-making and achievement. And part of this process of fully embracing reality is a complete willingness to receive honest feedback from others. I find a refusal to acknowledge the truth of my own emotional landscape to be one of the great pitfalls of my own leadership and one that I observe all too often.
My most significant disconnect with the ideas in this book was connected to Chapter 9, in which they describe how leaders should get themselves in the right mood. Very early in this section, they describe "method acting" as an analogy for how leaders should transform their emotional state to something more appropriate for a particular task or situation. This entire notion seemed very manipulative to me. Indeed, actors are supposed to misrepresent themselves and step into another world to demonstrate the life of a character on stage or screen. But in the real world, we are not actors, and I find it very disconcerting that we might grow in our ability to switch from one emotion to another, as circumstances dictate. The idea of forcing myself to switch emotions seems emotionally dysfunctional and very artificial. I acknowledge that particular moods work better for certain tasks, but I would much rather choose my task to fit my mood than choose my mood to fit my task. It seems to me that the idea of putting on an act to experience a desired emotion is dishonest and distasteful.
With this one content-related complaint aside, my primary critiques of this book are more with its presentation than with its ideas. To be perfectly honest, I found this book to be an exhausting and tedious read. I was frustrated that most of the personal examples throughout the book were so generic as to feel almost formulaic (with the exceptions of the stories about Bill Ford, Jack Welch, and Grady Little, which were the most engaging parts of the entire book).
I'm not sure that this book provides much of value, beyond stating an almost obvious main point. I think that the points of highest value in this book (the need for leaders to honestly acknowledge their own emotional status, to accurately assess the emotional well-being of others, and to manage these complex emotional situations with finesse and intentionality) are explained with greater relevance and clarity in other places. Peter Scazzero's "Emotionally Healthy Spirituality," for instance, kept me fully engaged and anxious to keep reading, even if I wasn't wildly enthusiastic about it. Caruso and Salovey's book seemed to me to be rather insignificant and boring, so I'd be hard pressed to recommend it to anyone.
 Good resource for my staff
I liked the overall theory approach the book takes, but then it gets into why these 4 skills are important, and finally, what to do about it. So, there is a balance of why and also what and how. My managers are excellent managers and get the job done. At times, they don't consider the emotional needs of their people. I hope that the book will allow them to at least consider the role emotions play at work. That will be a huge lift for them and their leadership skills.
The other reason I selected this book is that it does not claim to be the cure-all for leadership or people skills. They take a constrained approach, and this will resonate with my staff - be aware, though, that this sort of tone and approach may not work for you.
Difference between one star and five star reviews
I have read a few pages from the book (The three star rating is just to be on the balanced side of things) and the author's (Caruso) article "Defining the Inkblot Called Emotional Intelligence" published after this book in 2004.
I agree with the article that we should read, proactively accept, give constructive comments and learn from all data on any scientific/theoretical topic whether we agree with the data or not.
I have noticed that the reviewers rating one star have a more stereotype approach in their comments and are taking thing personally. These people also have one thing in common: not specified their own speciality and background in the field, and so no ground evidence on why exactly they did not like the book.
On the other-hand, reviewers giving 4 or 5 stars mostly have given professional explanations and have long years of experience either scientific or managerial or academic in the field of Management or Psychology. Therefore as I always agree, "science/knowledge is light", and so go for the more rationally emotional reviews and enjoy the book, no matter what its level.
Tact, Poise & Encouragement
This selection reflected tact, poise, and encouragement: great tact in pulling together corporate and academic disciplines, poise (in the Emotional Intelligence with which it was written), and Encouragement -- particularly for anyone who learned of the MSCEIT and how this assessment could reflect Emotional Intelligence ability. However, after reading the reviews on this site, it's obvious that many reviewers would disagree with this. Allow me, please, to state my review.
While I believe that comments are to be respected when both written and reviewed, I suspect sufficient lack of knowledge and professionalism on the part of some reviewers at this site. While each reader is entitled to his/her opinion of the book, anyone who is compelled to resort to trashing the book and/or its authors indicates to me a very juvenile/immature way of responding. There is neither value,nor depth, nor substance, in such responses, nor does such a response offer any constructive or valuable feedback for contemplation.
I have read the book and must say that I believe it to be a refreshing approach to EI/EQ. It's somewhat of a shift from the traditional Goleman-type readings, which, by the way, I have also appreciated reading. I've gained something valuable from all of them.
In "The Emotionally Intelligent Manager," Doctors Caruso and Salovey offer four distinct steps to managing with emotional intelligence. While a considerable portion of the manuscript appears dedicated to the corporate world, I find the selection -- in its entirety -- to be applicable for anyone in the corporate realm, the non-profit realm, or in the realm of academia. The book certainly allows for transfer of skills from one area to another, from one discipline to the next.
Additionally, readers who have found nothing but criticism should avail themselves to the training workshops that deal specifically with Emotional Intelligence and the MSCEIT -- the MSCEIT being the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test. The assessment measures EI ability.
Besides the MSCEIT, interesting and curious thinking would be to wonder where the scores of these individuals might play out on a typical 360 assessment. Wouldn't you wonder?
Not only have I been fortunate in attending the MSCEIT Training & Certification this year and the Six Seconds/Level One EQ Teacher & Training Certification previous to MSCEIT training, but I am also a PhD student who will be focusing my PhD in Integrated Psychology with a focus in EI/EQ. With that, I will have the opportunity to use the MSCEIT considerably in my quantitative study with regard to my dissertation.
I would encourage anyone who has so negatively reviewed/trashed "The Emotionally Intelligent Manager" and its authors to take the MSCEIT assessment discussed in the text to find out what his/her ability truly is in Emotional Intelligence. Only individuals who would refrain from considering doing something like this would be those who wouldn't be willing to acknowledge any deficit on their part in this regard, say, if one or more of the results on the MSCEIT would indicate an area or two that an individual might consider developing.
Perhaps folks who would avail themselves of this opportunity would come to realize that a Level One course in Six Seconds EQ (sixseconds.org) might benefit them before they so violently attack and pass judgment on another book or its authors without their having the "full deck of cards" to deal with, or should I say without having "all their ducks" in a row.
The ideal result would be for these individuals who feel the need to be so unproductively critical with hollow comments to realize that they truly jumped the gun in their initial reviews and to amend their positions. Pehaps they will have grown in their Emotional Intelligence ability to re-frame and re-evaluate the book for the genuine wisdom it vividly contains in both academic and corporate expertise.
With that respectfully spoken, I say "Carry on, Caruso & Salovey! I look for another respectable masterpiece to sequel this one!!!"
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